Description:

A few years ago I met Robert Uhlenbeck for the first time, when I was chairman of a local Rotary Club. After that I met him on several occasions at the Dutch Club in Bali. Robert, with his special wooden walking stick and dressed in the outfit of an old hippie. He looked like a survivor of the flower power time. Since 2007 I learned to know him better when I visited him in his house east of Singaraja, where he has been living at a nice location at a compound of a real Balinese family, in the midst of a kampong. The house of Robert is full of books, some of these over two hundred years old and a lot of them handle about Indonesia and especially about Bali. Robert lives alone in his house surrounded by his many inspiring books and his cats.

Robert is absolutely erudite. He is of a family of judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, doctors and professors, a family that has been living in Indonesia for over three hundred years.

Robert has an incredible sense of humor. He looks at the world as an observer and as such he can tell you many stories of his past and current experiences, all larded with great English humor.

I love to sit with Robert in a corner of his terrace listening to him, sharing stories with him, while he is enjoying his whiskey and cigarettes and I am sipping from a cup of tea (I don't drink or smoke).

Robert is an exceptional interesting nice guy.